Discovery of Bill Stampfl’s Body on Huascarán Mountain

Twenty years had passed since Bill Stampfl disappeared during an avalanche while attempting to climb the towering Huascarán, Peru’s highest mountain. His daughter, Jennifer Stampfl, had resigned herself to the thought that her father was lost forever. Yet, she still occasionally dreamt of him, imagining him alive but with amnesia in Peru, unaware of his family back in the United States. The idea of him being trapped in ice, considering his aversion to cold, troubled her. Nevertheless, she believed she had made peace with the mountain holding onto her father.

Then, one Saturday in recent times, her brother, Joseph Stampfl, delivered unexpected news. He began the conversation with, “Are you sitting down?”

“He told me that they found Dad,” she recounted. “And I said, ‘What?’”

An American climber named Ryan Cooper had managed to locate Joseph Stampfl to inform him that a group of climbers had chanced upon Bill Stampfl’s remains on Huascarán. The 22,205-foot peak in the Andes revealed Bill Stampfl’s body as the effects of climate change led to the melting of the mountain’s glaciers. Bill Stampfl had vanished during an expedition with two companions in 2002, as confirmed by the Peruvian authorities on Tuesday.

On June 27, while descending Huascarán, the climbers spotted a dark figure against the snow. As they approached, they realized it was a body, curled in a protective stance as if bracing for an avalanche. The body lay exposed atop the ice, not partially submerged but entirely visible. Ryan Cooper noted the outdated attire and the mummified state of the skin, indicating that the body had rested there for an extensive period.